


blue suede

by deniigiq



Series: Lighter Fluid Verse [6]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Peter is a very good boy surrounded by a lot of people who CANnot relate, Recreational Drug Use, Sharing Clothes, Team Red, Teenage Rebellion, Underage Smoking, fashion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-19 19:42:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22936810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “What does it take to be cool?” Peter demanded. “Red’s cool and Wade’s cool but only little kids call me cool. I want to be cool.”Sergeant Barnes pulled back from his gun with a tsking sound, then crossed his arms and gave Peter a lopsided grin.“You really wanna be cool?” he asked.(Peter and the crusade to become hip.)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Wade Wilson
Series: Lighter Fluid Verse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523357
Comments: 41
Kudos: 677





	blue suede

**Author's Note:**

> I want new clothes!!!!  
> I feel guilty for spending money on new clothes!!!  
> I am now making my own clothes!! Poorly!!!!
> 
> References to drug use, self-harm, underage smoking, and frequently irresponsible adults below.

Wade had a black scarf that he tied around his neck anytime the temperature dropped below about 35 degrees, Peter noticed.

He often wrapped the scarf around Peter’s neck while he and Peter and Red were standing in a circle, planning how to go about breaking into a building or throwing a target into terror and panic so that one of the others could swoop in or two folks could double them when they least expected it.

The scarf was surprisingly warm, smelt strongly of clove, and got some serious mileage. Peter had seen not just Wade wearing this scarf, but Dom and Matt and Ms. Romanoff and Wade’s old roommate and once even Cable.

Wade, usually the first guy to make an innuendo about sharing clothes, didn’t actually seem to notice or care too much about all the action this particular piece of his clothing got.

Peter thought that that was cool.

Just the idea of sharing clothes so casually was super cool. Like.

Man.

MJ had taken and worn one of Ned’s sweaters once and Peter had been so painfully awed and obsessed with the gesture that he hadn’t known what to do with himself.

He knew that May still wore some of Ben’s clothes. He himself still wore some of Ben’s clothes, specifically his big khaki jacket. His work jacket. Ben had sprayed it with scotch-guard rather than go get one that was waterproof, but that really hadn’t done the job. It got stiff when it got wet and afterwards got a somewhat damp and musty smell about it. It probably should have been gross but was just so intensely Ben that Peter sometimes pretended not to notice that it was raining for a little while so that when he got home, he could put the coat next to the heater in his room and just for a few minutes, pretend that Ben had let him borrow it that morning.

It was probably a silly thing to do, he thought. But even so, it seemed way different to the clothes sharing that these other people were doing.

Like, Matt constantly, _constantly_ wore Foggy’s clothes. Their old college clothes had apparently been so ill-fitting and exchanged between hands so many times that neither of them really knew whose were whose anymore. If Peter went out to find Matt at the gym or at home on the weekend, he was almost guaranteed to be wearing one of those college shirts or sweaters of nebulous origin. Either that or something that he had clearly swiped from Foggy’s apartment.

Peter could tell when Matt’s things were actually Foggy’s things firstly because they were too big on Matt and secondly because Foggy wore rainbows of color that Matt would never on his life purchase of his own volition.

Matt, despite being unable to see, had a very classic sense of fashion. He liked cool, neutral colors with the occasional pop of something bright like a red or a blue. He did not wear anything floral; he barely wore anything patterned. He just screamed ‘classically manly and real suave about it.’

Except for his gym clothes, of course. Those all just shrieked ‘I’m a gym rat, come at me.’

Foggy, on the other hand, was secretly some kind of rainbow grunge-man with piercings and tattoos that he didn’t let Peter or anyone else see.

Wade said, shaking his head in disappointment , that this was what punks who joined the establishment all ended up becoming.

Wade’s clothes, when he wasn’t in kill- or maim-mode, though somewhat similar to Foggy’s in spirit, were the opposite of Matt’s in pretty much every other way. He was almost sloppy. He wore obnoxious shit with hideous patterns simply because he could. He had Hawaiian shirts of every type (a connoisseur, he said he was) and a collection of windbreakers that ensured that no one would ever lose sight of him in a crowd.

This was Wade’s going-out wear.

His home-wear and his chill-wear were toned way, way down. In those clothes, he carried with him a strong atmosphere of the 1980s or the 1990s grunge scene. He wore either hoodies or thick jackets lined with scratchy fleece and shirts with band names on them that Peter didn’t always recognize. Wade’s jeans always had holes in them and he had a couple sets of boots that Peter was pretty sure had existed before he’d even been born. He sometimes wore leather belts and bracelets and he even occasionally wore rings.

He had a collection of early-spring looks that featured all that dark grimy stuff paired with pastels, like huge, drapey knitted sweaters in ice cream colors or black all over with the exception of lavender distressed jeans.

Wade sometimes even went out and bought clothes that he altered to suit his tastes at home.

And despite his looks being so frequently chaotic, there was a seriousness about how he put them all together that made Peter think that his own outfits were repetitive and young.

Matt’s clothes certainly made Peter feel young, even the ones that he’d stolen from Foggy.

“I need style,” Peter told May firmly shortly after this revelation.

“You have style, baby,” May told him breezily.

No, he didn’t. He had a wardrobe full of dumb t-shirts and crew-necked sweaters and flannels that everyone told him he’d eventually grow into. What he needed was _style_. Something intentional.

“But you love those shirts,” May pointed out.

And like, yes. Of course he did.

But he wanted to be cool, May. Like the other guys were.

“Peter, being cool isn’t about the clothes you have, it’s about how you wear them,” May told him.

“What does that even _mean_?” Peter moaned.

Mr. Stark laughed at him when he told him that he was going to go get him some style. Which was rude. Just plain rude.

“I’ve got loads of potential,” Peter told him. “You just wait.”

“I know you do,” Mr. Stark said. “Trust me, I know. It’s just—you’re a kid, Pete. Dress like a kid. Embrace it. People are trying so hard to look older than they are at your age, but like. It’s not even worth it.”

Peter huffed.

“What did _you_ look like when you were a kid?” he demanded.

“A hot mess,” Mr. Stark said. “I think I wore the same sweater for nearly a year straight. People used to ask me if I ever washed it.”

Ew.

“That’s gross,” Peter scolded past-Mr. Stark.

“Fuckin’ loved that sweater—do I still have that sweater?” Mr. Stark wondered. His face fell. “Wouldn’t fit even if I did, would it?”

Why was he so sad about this?

It was a sweater. It wasn’t like Ben’s coat. Mr. Stark could buy one from the corner store for fifteen bucks if he was so heartbroken about it.

Mr. Stark laughed at him again and set off to the other side of the lab in a good mood, mumbling to himself about finding a bigger version of that sweater.

The real star of the vigilante fashion world had to be Sergeant Barnes.

Sergeant Barnes was the coolest vigilante ever. And not just because he could pretty much do anything he wanted with no holds barred. He was also super glamorous about it.

“Maybe I’ll grow my hair,” Peter mused next to him in the mask.

Sergeant Barnes’s thick, strappy leather outfit, complete with messy grease paint around his eyes and long, flowing locks pouring all over his shoulders, made Peter feel like a string bean, and not even a particularly good one. His suit was so tight. So garish.

He looked like a caricature of a superhero.

“Whaddya need more hair for, kid?” Sergeant Barnes asked, picking his own out of his face to squint more effectively and angerly through the scope of his rifle.

Peter dropped his shoulder into the concrete and then rolled out onto his front next to Sergeant Barnes to pout at him better.

“I wanna be cool,” he said.

Sergeant Barnes chuffed a little laugh with his eye stuck against his scope.

“No one’d see your hair in that suit, champ,” he pointed out. “It’d just be a heat factory in there.”

Oh.

Right.

Damn.

“Maybe a leather jacket then?” Peter tried. “They’re cool, right?”

Sergeant Barnes chuckled again.

“That’s right. Leather’s always cool,” he promised.

Peter felt a little patronized. He sat back up.

“What does it take to be cool?” he demanded. “Red’s cool and Wade’s cool but only little kids call me cool. I want to be cool.”

Sergeant Barnes pulled back from his gun with a tsking sound, then crossed his arms and gave Peter a lopsided grin.

“You really wanna be cool?” he asked.

Peter perked up.

“Yes,” he said. “I live to be cool.”

“Alright,” Sergeant Barnes said, “Put out your hand. Close your eyes.”

Peter did.

He felt something press into his palm and opened them to find Sergeant Barnes lighting up a cigarette. He looked into his hand and saw an identical one in it.

“This isn’t cool, JB,” he scolded. “This is just lung cancer.”

Sergeant Barnes blew out a cloud of smoke and grinned like a fox through it. He lifted his eyebrows.

“Plenty cool,” he said. “Give it a shot.”

Peter looked at the cigarette and frowned.

He did have a healing factor. A single cigarette probably wouldn’t give him cancer, right?

Sergeant Barnes grinned wide when he pulled up his mask and he even pulled out his fancy-looking lighter to light it for Peter.

Peter took one drag.

Peter wasn’t allowed to see Sergeant Barnes anymore because Mr. Wilson and Cap had apparently seen this whole exchange happen from another roof top and had realized too late that they weren’t going to be able to stop it in time.

They tried, though.

Cap scooped Peter off the edge of the roof what felt like mere seconds after his first and only inhale and thumped his back through the coughing and the godawful taste.

Mr. Wilson stood on his tip-toes to tower menacingly over Sergeant Barnes.

Cap told Peter that smoking was a disgusting, nasty habit and that he should never, ever try it again. Sergeant Barnes called him a pot calling the kettle black and Cap told him to butt the fuck out and think about his influence.

“You smoke?” Peter asked Cap.

“Smoke _d_ ,” Cap said with an emphasis on the ‘d.’ “For a long time. That’s how we used to treat asthma back in the day, and _that_ ’s how I got addicted, so we’re not going down that road, are we?”

No, sir. We are not.

Cap was satisfied with this answer.

Cap even admitted that he still smoked sometimes, especially with friends, but it was still super gross and not at all good for the people around him. He felt really bad about it, so he only did it at home these days.

Peter asked him if it made him feel cool.

Cap stared.

“’Cool’ is just a classist construct, Peter,” he said seriously, “It’s really just a means of social inclusion and exclusion. What is really cool is consciousness and respect for others.”

This sounded like a textbook. Or worse, a school video.

“I don’t have any money,” Peter told Cap. “Does that mean I don’t have class?”

Cap stared.

“That’s what they _want_ you to think,” he said, putting hands on Peter’s shoulders. “Resist it, Peter. You gotta think—”

“Steve,” Mr. Wilson sighed. “He’s barely sixteen.”

“ _Resist_ it.”

“Steve,” Mr. Wilson said again.

Mr. Wilson said that Peter was already cool and that he should keep on being himself because that was what cool people did and that’s why people liked them.

Peter decided that this aligned with May’s whole spiel about wearing clothes.

It was nice. It was probably uplifting.

But he didn’t have time for that right now. He was looking for a quick fix.

He asked Matt to help him be cool because Matt was like, renowned for being cool.

“Oh, no. That’s the self-loathing,” Matt told him. “Did you know, back in the day, everyone wanted to have TB ‘cause it made them all pale and weak and romantic and shit?”

Um?

 _What_?

“Yeah,” Matt said. “And when I was a kid, the cool thing was to look like you’d forgotten to eat for days and were too drunk or high on heroin to wash.”

This was not motivating, Red.

“ _I_ wasn’t allowed to do any of that,” Matt pouted, tapping the side of his finger irritably against his desk. “ _I_ had to wear collared shirts and a school uniform. _I_ had to get drug tested like, once a month after I got sectioned that one time.”

“Was that cool for you?” Peter asked nervously.

“Hm? Oh yeah, way cool,” Matt said. “Nearly died a couple times, of course, but you know. Super cool. I got all kinds of attention in school. Girls loved me. Teachers hated me. I was the hot, disruptive new kid in pretty much every class, every year. Checked all those boxes for all, oh, three? Four? Schools I went to? Yeah, no problem.”

“I don’t think I want attention like that,” Peter said. “I just want to feel cool.”

“Ah,” Matt said, pausing in his tapping. “Then you shouldn’t talk to Karen. Karen did coke in the girls’ bathroom at her highschool when she was around your age.”

Holy shit.

“I don’t want to do coke,” Peter said more tearfully than he’d meant to.

“You sure?” Matt asked.

“I’m sure,” Peter said.

Matt huffed like he was sad.

“One of these days,” he mused wistfully. Then sat up straight. “Actually, maybe tomorrow. Hold that thought—when do I have court?”

Peter decided that now was time to show himself out.

May said that Matt had what people sometimes called an ‘addictive personality’ and so while he was an adult and allowed to do drugs as he wanted, Peter was not allowed to follow in his example.

May said that if he wanted to smoke pot, she was okay with that, but there would be no coke in their house.

Peter felt the most uncool and young he had in a long time.

“I don’t want to do coke,” he told May.

“I know, honey,” May told him comfortingly. “You don’t have to, no one is making you. Why don’t you go talk to Foggy? He looks like a reformed stoner. I’m sure he was very cool when he was your age.”

Foggy said that he couldn’t be assed with people’s coolness levels anymore. He’d been a ‘weird fucking theatre kid’ when he was Peter’s age and it was only when he’d crossed that line into a people-pleaser that people had started to really notice him.

He told Peter that being cool wasn’t worth it. Look at Matt and Karen and all their cool-kid trauma.

“What you need is a thing that you do really well. Better than anyone else,” Foggy told him.

“What was your thing?” Peter asked.

“Being smart, being funny, and getting piercings,” Foggy said. “ I had a face full of metal by the time I left highschool, Pete. I was the goth kid scanning barcodes at your local hardware store. I think I had purple hair at some point. Anyways, the point is that now’s your time to try everything and see what feels right for you. Just try it. You don’t have to stick with it.”

That sounded kind of fun.

“Exactly!” Foggy said with a broad smile. “It should be fun. Go out and have fun!”

Now that, Peter could do.

He got a pair of red sneakers. May gave him the money to do it on his own and let him loose at the consignment store up north. She told him to take them out Spiderman-ing with him and to ruin them. ‘Just tear ‘em up, kid’ she said.

She promised she wouldn’t say anything about them, and when they were good and torn up, they could go back to the consignment store and find another pair in a different color.

Then they went to a craft store to get things so that he could make a few patches to sew onto his backpack. She thought that they might help him not lose this one.

He liked them.

They didn’t look like anything anyone else had on their bags at school, and from a distance, their messiness looked intentional.

Peter asked Wade if he could wear his scarf.

Wade gave it to him without question.

Peter wrapped it around his neck and curled in next to Wade on his fire-escape, watching the people moving in across the way shout at each other from the windows with his new sneakers on. Wade smoked a cigarette, but he didn’t offer it to Peter.

Peter told him about Sergeant Barnes and the other guys and the cigarettes and Wade laughed so hard he coughed.

“Everyone’s got weird youths, Pete,” he said, tapping ash off his cigarette. “Sounds like Cap was an anarchist. Barnes was probably a James Dean kinda guy and I would put good money on Wilson being the student council president or a jock. Maybe both.”

“Red was an emo kid,” Peter said.

“Oh, absolutely,” Wade chuckled. “Karen sounds like she was a sorority brat in the making and Nelson—ah, bless him. Baby goth. Fuckin’ adorable.”

“What about you?” Peter asked. “Were you a cool kid?”

Wade took a long drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke away from Peter.

“I was just angry, Pete,” he said. “I was out bein’ a delinquent and shit; not much has changed for me. Always been a thrill junkie. Music helped. I listened to all kinds of music. Started chasin’ bands, going to concerts. That helped a whole helluva lot. Nelson’s right, you know. You just gotta find your passion. Bein’ cool follows bein’ passionate. You just gotta play the game for a couple years until that rule kicks in, you know?”

No, Peter didn’t.

He buried his nose in Wade’s scarf and felt Wade’s big heavy arm sling itself over his shoulders.

“Here’s how it is, kiddo,” Wade said. “For about three or four years here, everyone’s idea of being ‘cool’ is being an asshole. You know, laughing at people, bein’ bad, doing illegal shit and not gettin’ caught—or hell, doing illegal shit and gettin’ caught. So you can either play that game or not play that game until you’re about twenty or so, and after that, that kind of thing starts to get kind of boring.”

Wade sniffed.

“Like, it just turns into the same thing happenin’ again and again, every weekend, just at a different house, a different bar, a different club, whatever,” he continued. “So ‘round then, people start breakin’ off from that and those that do become the cool ones, you know? ‘Cause they’re not doing what everyone else is doing. They’re their own people. Shit’s fun. Shit’s exciting. These folks’ve got something to talk about that isn’t what everyone else at the party’s yammering on about—you know, sex, drugs, OD-ing--these people can actually hold a conversation with you and man, _that’s_ cool. So you just gotta slog through that, and you’ll be just fine.”

Wade’s scarf smelled like vanilla on top of the clove that day.

“Are you wearing aftershave?” Peter asked him.

Wade lifted a brow.

“Not right now,” he said.

“Is Red gonna go get high?” Peter asked him.

“Hopefully,” Wade said. “That boy needs to go wear himself the fuck out for a minute.”

Hm.

“I think I’m gonna be mostly boring for now,” Peter said. “And then I’ll get interesting again in college. Maybe I’ll try some things.”

“Ehn. Try some things now, Pete,” Wade said. “Here, I got a place for you to start.”

Peter perked up.

“You do?” he asked.

“Hell yeah, I do. C’mere, kid. Let’s baptize you in vinyl. We’ll get a l’il bit of real music in you and you’ll be on your way to full-blown teenage-rebellion. Trust me.”

He did.


End file.
